German online weekly FOCUS here reports how cuts by wind energy giant Enercon will lead to 3,000 layoffs. According to Enercon chief executive Hans-Dieter Kettwig, “politicians have pulled the plug on wind energy.”
Subsidies cut
Once lavished with huge incentives, the German wind industry is being hit hard after the government recently ended the huge subsidies that were once aimed at expanding the installation of wind energy capacity.
Power grid operators had been struggling to keep the grid stable due to erratic feed-in and the subsidized feed-in of wind energy caused German electricity prices to become among the most expensive worldwide.
Fierce opposition from hundreds of protest groups
Moreover, hundreds of citizen protest groups have sprouted and since become a formidable force pushing for the stop of proposed wind projects.
Not only have wind parks scarred the German landscape and destroyed habitats nationwide, but they have also been shown to be a real health hazard to humans living in their proximity through the low-frequency infrasound they emit. Enough is enough, citizens say.
3,000 job cuts in the works
FOCUS reports: “The crisis in the German wind energy industry is worsening. According to the ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung’, hard cuts at the largest German manufacturer Enercon will cost 3,000 jobs.”
Next year Enercon will also cut contracts with suppliers, sending a wave of job losses across the industry. “If supply contracts are terminated as planned, many of these companies are threatened with extinction,” FOCUS reports.
FOCUS notes that the layoffs will hit regions that are already economically weak. “At the Aurich and Magdeburg locations, 1,500 jobs will be cut, according to the company. At the company headquarters in Aurich, 250 to 300 jobs are affected.”
Stricter regulations for wind parks, greater setback distances
Not only have the subsidies for German wind parks been cut back, but also setback rules will become more strict in order to protect homes and residents from landscape blight and infrasound.
In the future, wind parks will need to keep a greater distance away from residential areas.
The current CDU/CSU/SPD government wants to keep at least one kilometer between wind power installations and residential areas in the future. This will make many proposed projects impossible.
German Greens demand the industrialization of scenic landscape
The stricter setback rules have been sharply criticized by the wind industry, and particularly by German Green party leader, Annalena Baerbock: “The planned distance rules for wind turbines are devastating,” she told network Germany RND.
“Contrary to all public announcements, the federal government is thus making further expansion of wind power impossible. This is tantamount to a boycott of the Paris Climate Treaty and its own climate targets.” Baerbock also told RND: “The federal government claims to want to get out of coal but at the same time is stopping the expansion of wind power.”
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As stated in the story wind is not always available !!! Nor is solar both systems need to have battery backup to beof any real use !! Solar depends on the sun while wind obviously depends on the wind which also depends in part on the sun !! As it requires a source of both hot and cold air to generate a wind force !!!
Next nuclear energy leaves a lot to be desired as well as there’s the spent fuel rods in the most common nuclear power plant !! They are spent because they no longer produce heat to boil water to generate steam !! But they are full of free electrons that radiate energy !! Now if our green energy wizards could figure out how to capture the radiation they would then have a long lasting energy supply !!!
Wind and solar are both a joke..
Instead of helping people, they HURT people..
Time to get MSR going now!
If they had stuck with nuclear, shut down coal and built out nuclear instead of renewables, they’d have a carbon footprint as low as France by now.
But noooo, because nuclear power is a fate worse than global warming….!
It’s real simple: Go nuclear, or go extinct.
My solar power system is nice and quiet! 😉
Regardless of your views on climate change (the role of C02, and humans’ contribution) our current mitigations technologies, wind turbines and solar panels, are not effective at reducing C02 emissions
Please see this article and comments following. This is from Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, those responsible for the generation, distribution and billing of electricity in the province of Ontario, Canada. https://blog.ospe.on.ca/featured/ontario-wasted-more-than-1-billion-worth-of-clean-energy-in-2016-enough-to-power-760000-homes/
It is well past time to turn off all turbines, due to known and documented health harm.
Please ask anyone who denies health harm of Industrial Wind Turbines to watch the following presentation:
Title: “Infrasound and Low Frequency Noise: Physics & Cells, History & Health”
Speaker: Dr Mariana Alves-Pereira
Location: University of Waterloo
Date: September 12, 2019
Video archive of presentation:
https://livestream.com/itmsstudio/events/8781285
Dr. Alves-Pereira’s research profile is at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mariana_Alves-pereira
Note; there is approx 2 mins of dead air at the beginning. The talk is ~50 minutes, followed by a long Q&A
Political types in the U.S need to start paying attention to the outfall of the “Green Revolution.” Funny thing about energy is it is driven by energy imperatives. PHYSICS matters, not political drama & theater. Time to start paying attention (here)…
Finally some good news from Germany.
Wow! Germany is FINALLY waking up to the reality that wind power simply does not WORK!!!
Trouble is even more of them will flock to the UK where our government is too stupid to wake up.
This is extremely significant. Historically Germany has been the leader among nations in the climate change movement. Germany backing off on wind energy shows a trend that isn’t just beginning but is well on the way.
The article talks a lot about job loss in the wind industry. I’m sure this is minor compared to the job loss caused by higher energy prices, especially with industry and their jobs moving to nations with more competitive energy prices. I’m sure due to internet censorship my searches for specific figures didn’t find anything.
But it is interesting that Germany is stopping the subsidies and creating sensible setbacks for health reasons, and the industry dies. Tells you alot of the robustness (or lack thereof) of windpower.
Just after they have cut down 600 acres of trees to make way for Wind Turbines this whole thing makes no sense
Green anarchists want what they want. It doesn’t have to make sense. They don’t have to make sense. They are operating at a higher intellectual level that the rest of us (sarcasm emoji) so of course it won’t make sense to us.